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Campaign of the Month: Exclamation of Outrage

This is a new campaign planned to start in autumn (north hemisphere) 2010. Organised by several German peace and human rights organisations, among them: the Armaments Information Office and the German Peace Society (DFG-VK) who is a member of WRI.

The German foreign and economic policy must be an authentic and credible policy of peace based on humanitarian values. This can only be achieved by respecting the dignity and life of all human beings – even or just the one of innocent and
defenseless victims in the recipient countries of German weapons and munitions, this is a new campaign to highlight the effect of German arms exports under the title: "Exclamation of Outrage – Ban weapons exports, give a voice to the victims!”

The campaign intention is to put massive pressure on those who are politically responsible for weapons’ exports and make them revise their opinion. In a first step, the campaign wants to achieve that no more weapons are going to be delivered to human rights violating regimes and warring nations in the first stage of this perennial campaign – because the number of civil victims of the armament policy is immeasurably high. Therefore we will invite people, who have become victims of the German armament policy themselves or their relatives, to Germany and other weapon delivering countries.

They want to tell their destiny to the responsible politicians and armaments’ managers and they want to convince them to deny further weapons’ exports.

The campaign will only invite those victims, who haven’t been traumatised and therefore have the strength to confront the responsible people for weapons’ exports with their inner
power and our medical supervision and support.
It would be helpful to start this campaign also in other countries in which weapons are produced and exported to warring and human rights violating nations.

The campaign proposes to cooperate among networks working against the arms trade: War Resisters' International, IANSA, the European Network Against Arms Trade (ENAAT) and many other.

In Oberndorf, where the arms producer Heckler & Koch is located, we often hear the statement: “If we don’t deliver weapons, other providers will do!" This reasoning is wrong. Just to give an example: Heckler & Koch wanted to export 65.000 G36 rifles to Nepal. The crown prince Dipendra
shot several members of the Royal Family with one of the test rifles. Afterward the Federal Government forbid the deal. Belgium delivered about 5500 Minimi-rifles. But no other country in the world delivered the missing 59.500 rifles.

This shows: A global change in thinking has started. Another example: The ones who claimed the prohibition of the production of land mines 25 years ago, was discounted as a wacko. Today there is the Ottawa-Agreement, which has been signed by more
than 100 states. Now it is time to approach the prohibition of small arms seriously.

The campaign vision is a world without weapons and military, where conflicts will be hold with dialogues and therewith civilly – a world, which is more peaceful and therewith fairer.

The campaign has the aim to help reducing weapons and military in the world.